A wide open Barça

Barcelona, a team known throughout the world during the past few seasons for its solid defence, seems to have lost this virtue. The 'Azulgranas' have conceded 21 goals in the 17 official matches played, and have only managed to keep a clean sheet four times: Valencia (1-0) and Granada (2-0) in la Liga, Benfica (0-2) in Champions and Alavés (0-3) in the Copa del Rey.

So far this has been masked by its strong goalscoring success; with Messi's records, a Villa who has returned from injury with his goal instincts intact, an attacking midfield with a good percentage of goals and with some offensive full backs, who also have added to the tally. The victories hide it all, but when it loses all the weaknesses of this Barça are exposed.

There have been many games in which it has had to make a comeback and, on more occasions than it would have liked, it has won in the last minute. Osasuna, Spartak, Granada, Seville and Celtic are some examples of how much it has struggled and how weak the defence has been, although the most shocking example was that of Deportivo-Barcelona (4-5), in which the 'Azulgranas' allowed Deportivo to make up goals from being 0-3 down and ended up praying for the whistle after an own-goal from Alba.

The most obvious cause of the deterioration in defence is the injuries affecting all the players in the defensive line up. But, there are more worrying problems, such as the amount of own-goals scored, the goals conceded from set pieces and those caused by lack of concentration and individual mistakes.